My grandfather Cam Shortts was a great businessman, but he was an even better hunter.

He owned a successful hunting and fishing lodge in northern Ontario, an amazing place where I spent many, many days in my youth.

And it was ‘Up North’ nestled on the shore of a shimmering lake with that great man that I learned everything I needed to know about recruiting.

No, Gramps wouldn’t drag out his old business school texts to the duck blind. Instead, his methodical, precise approach to hunting taught me valuable lessons I’ve carried with me ever since.

Grandpa knew exactly what kind of ducks he wanted before he set out to hunt; mallards, blue-winged teals, woodducks. But more importantly, he knew what kinds of ducks he didn’t want. Namely, fish ducks who are renowned for tasting downright terrible.

It’s an approach many business people don’t take when ‘hunting’ for candidates. They focus so much on what they want, they don’t consider what they don’t want. Before the hiring process begins, you should absolutely list all the traits you would love to have in the ideal applicant; years of marketing experience, ability to travel, an MBA.

But then, think about the traits you absolutely don’t want. Your list might be have things like avoiding candidates who appear to jump from job to job far too often, or who have worked for a company you don’t respect, or even candidates that smoke.

Grandpa was so focused on getting the ducks he wanted, there were many times we’d go home without having fired a single shot (not an easy task for a 14-year old who really liked to shoot!) He always said he’d rather leave without a single duck then leave with a bad one.

This lesson rang true when I was involved in hiring for a key senior position. A director and I traveled to Boston and whittled 150 resumes down to 16 candidates. After multiple interviews with each of them, both my colleague and I couldn’t pinpoint one that blew us away. And despite the pressure to hire for the role, both of our guts said ‘no’ so we flew home empty-handed.

Knowing what kind of ducks he wanted was one thing, but Grandpa’s ability to pick them out when most everyone else couldn’t even see any ducks in the sky was amazing. It’s a skill he honed over years of hunting (he did own a hunting lodge after all) and it’s a skill I’ve picked up after hiring hundreds of people in my career.

Nearly anyone can gloss over their weaknesses with a fancy resume or well-crafted cover letter. But once you get that candidate into an interview, it’s easy to see right through their bluster and unearth the real candidate (for better or worse)

Huddled in our blind, waiting patiently for the birds we wanted—those are the memories I will always have of my Grandpa. They are also the lessons that have helped me recruit awesome employees throughout my career.

Happy hunting!

I have been recruiting thousands of employees for 25 years now – and this is easily the best recruiting tactic I’ve ever heard of for getting true A Players.  It’s a twist on the old internal referral bonus…

I cover a ton of other systems on recruiting and interviewing here – but this one is fantastic…

• All employees are eligible.
• Any employee referring another person from outside the company who gets hired earns a bonus of 100% of that employees starting salary.  i.e. refer a person who earns $120,000 and you earn a bonus of $120,000
• The bonus is paid out 10% a year, for 10 years.  So you’ll earn $12,000 a year for the next 10 years…
• Caveat is – both of you need to be working for the company for the bonus to keep being paid out.  If either of you leave for any reason – it stops.
• Keep referring new hires, and you’ll keep adding new bonus amounts on top of the others.

The best part of this is, internal employees will work to keep people happy so they stay, you’ll have a built in happiness machine.

Seems expensive at first blush – but it will drive great new people into the company, and the longer people are with you, the more skills and culture they’ll build up for you.

More great tools about recruiting here…

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

So, you want to be an expert recruiter ?  You want to get strong at interviewing ?

In all likelihood, this will never happen.  MOST CEOs and Entrepreneurs have far too many things on their plate to get good at this.  I’m not talking about being competent, I’m talking about being awesome at it.

As Malcom Gladwell says in his book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.  Let’s say he’s exaggerating, let’s say it only takes you 1,000 hours, or even 100 hours, are you really prepared to put that much effort into getting great at interviewing & recruiting, if you’re not – then it’s easy – outsource it to the professionals.  Especially when it comes to key hires.

I’ve personally spent close to a thousand hours interviewing and working on my interview skills.  I can stack up with the top 2%.  That’s why I finally decided that instead of simply training CEOs on how to recruit and interview their key hires, I’d source 2 TOP Recruiting companies who could do it for them- for the key hires at least.

I’ve found two:

-one focuses only on C-Level roles where the total comp is $300,000 or higher.

-the second focuses on VP, Director, and C-Level where the comp is $150-$250k.

It you’re interested in having them do retained searches for you, drop me an email, let me know what you’re hiring, comp etc., and I’ll happily intro you.

OR, spend a thousand hours, and perfect your recruiting & interviewing skills, and do it yourself…

The following interview questions are from a survey I found years ago and also include a bunch of my favorites.

I only listed the ones I really like best, categorized according to personal background, skills and abilities, academic preparation, and other topics.

This list of questions would be an excellent resource to use when preparing for interviews with prospective employees.

ABILITY TO DEAL WITH ADVERSITY, THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING

• What are your personal goals, and have you achieved them? If not, why?
• Who was the most difficult person you’ve dealt with? How did you respond?
• Describe a frustrating experience from work. How did you deal with it?
• What are some of the greatest personal challenges you have faced?
• How do you handle rejection?
• What aspects of your past jobs were most frustrating?
• What life experiences have given you the greatest reward?
• Can you tell me about the toughest job you’ve ever had?
• What was the most difficult aspect of obtaining a college degree?

CAREER GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

• What are your career interests?
• What are your standards of success/goals for a job?
• What are your goals and aspirations for the next three years?
• What are your long-range goals and how are you preparing to achieve them?
• If you could create the perfect job for yourself, what would you do?
• Please tell me about your plans for the future.
• What work would you like to do that really interests you?
• What is your timetable for achievement of your current career goals?

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

• What skills do you possess that will help make you successful in this job?
• Why should we hire you?
• Have you ever worked in a similar position with another organization, and what did you enjoy most about and least about it?
• Please discuss some of your past jobs and what you accomplished in them?
• What prior work experiences have you had?
• What were your accomplishments in these prior work experiences?
• Please tell me about the duties/requirements of your last job.
• Elaborate on one of the work experiences listed on your resume.
• What did you enjoy most about your previous job experiences? Least?
• In addition to your educational and professional experiences, what else would you like us to know about you in order to make an appropriate decision?
• What skills will you bring to the job that will enhance our team or company?

LEADERSHIP

• What are your major strengths and weaknesses?
• What did you see as your major strengths and/or weaknesses on this job?
• What would your last two employers say about you, good and bad?
• How would you describe your supervisory/leadership style?
• Who or what had the greatest influence on your life?
• Describe the difference between motivation and inspiration, and how these apply to you in the work environment.

INITIATIVE AND FOLLOW-THROUGH

• What are your greatest achievements at this point in your life?
• Tell me about your accomplishments during college that make you proudest.
• If friends/colleagues were to describe you to a stranger what would they say?
• What do you consider most important when evaluating yourself?
• What were your most significant achievements?

COMMUNICATION

• How would you describe your style of communication?
• Tell me about a time you had to sell an idea to someone else.
• What do you enjoy doing most?
• Tell me about a time you had to present information to a large group of people. How did you feel and how successful were you?

WORKING EFFECTIVELY WITH OTHERS

• How well do you work with others?
• What are some of the pros and cons of working on a team project?
• When have you led a team to achieve a specific goal, what were the results?
• What have you admired in people who have previously supervised your work? What haven’t you admired in these individuals?
• How would you resolve conflict in a group situation?

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

• What changes would you make in your school’s academic program?
• Tell me about a time you found a new and better way of doing something.
• What was the largest, most creative project you’ve been involved in to date?
• Tell me the most creative solution you have come up with to solve a problem.
• Tell me a time when you had to bring out the creativity in others.

DECISION-MAKING

• Please tell me about a conflict and how you resolved it.
• Tell me a time you had to make an important decision with limited facts.
• Tell me a time you had to make an unpopular decision.
• Tell me about a bad decision you made and what you would do differently?

DELEGATION AND ORGANIZATION

• How do you organize your day?
• Tell me about a time you delegated a project effectively.
• Describe to me a time when a supervisor delegated a task to you when you had a full workload. How did you handle the situation?
• Describe what your closets and garage look like today.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SALES

• What personal qualities do you bring to this firm?
• Tell me about when you dealt with an irate customer.
• What does the term “the customer is always right” mean to you?
• What’s the best example of awesome customer service you’ve provided?

GENERAL

• What starting salary do you expect as an employee?
• When comparing one company offer to another, what factors will be important to you besides starting salary?
• Please tell me about yourself. How would you describe yourself?
• Name three people who have inspired you and why.
• What personal qualities do you bring to this firm?
• What do you know about our company?
• Why are you interviewing with us?
• Why do you want to work in the position you are seeking?
• What are your expectations of us?
• Why did you select us?

Most top performers work for really average companies.

Your job is to find the amazing people that work somewhere else and get them to work for you.

Don’t make a habit of recruiting and hiring unemployed people.  Find the go-getters that have jobs right now!

On the day Intrawest Ski Resorts were acquired by Fortress, I was on the phone to all the top people at the company telling them I wanted to hire everyone good because it was going to implode.

I eventually hired five of their key people over the next three months because I knew that these people had already been working for a high performance organization. I just went out and got them. It was as easy as that.

Getting the right people can be easy if you’re willing to make it happen.  I often see entrepreneurs struggle because they don’t know how to seek out exceptional people or they don’t work hard enough searching for the gems.

My grandfather, Cam Shortts, who recently died at 96, taught me how to hire great people. He owned a hunting and fishing resort in Northern Ontario called Lift-The-Latch Lodge, and he’d take me duck hunting as a teenager.

Grandpa always knew exactly what kinds of ducks he wanted before we set out to hunt: blue-winged teals, mallards, wood ducks and canvas backs. He also knew what kind he didn’t want: fish ducks. Before we set out on any hunting expedition, he made it clear what his goals were, and that our reward was only as worthwhile as the ducks we’d selected.

Recruiting the right people is just like duck hunting: you must have a crystal clear picture in your mind of exactly what you’re looking for, and good aim.

You also need to be sure that all new hires will truly impress every person they interact with, whether it’s customers, strategic partners, vendors, the media, or the public at large.

So know exactly who you want to hire, go find them, and shoot them out of the sky.

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

A business owner recently told me they couldn’t hire any great employees because there weren’t any to hire in his city.

I said, “It’s not a tight labor force, there’s just a whole bunch of crappy companies to work for.

There are a ton of great employees–they just don’t want to work for you. It’s an easy market to find great employees when you’re a great employer.  Get your vision out there so everybody knows what you’re building.”

That’s when it gets easy.

At the beginning of every interview give a copy of your Painted Picture to each prospective employee.

If they apply by email, have an auto-reply set up that responds, “Thanks for applying to work for us.  Please read our Painted Picture below.  It explains what our company will look and feel like three years from now.  If this sounds like the kind of company you want to help build, please reply to this email with ‘interview me’ in the subject line.”

Before you interview people, your Painted Picture will attract the right people and repel the wrong people.

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.

In close to thirty years of my professional life, I’ve only had two job interviews. The rest of the time I was poached by one company while working for another.

I always advise the CEOs that I mentor that there are lots of reasons why finding the right people is hard, but if you want your business to be exceptional, your staff must be exceptional people. It takes work but it’s worth the investment of time.

I had to remind someone of this while on a multi-city speaking engagement. At a talk in Sydney, Australia, a member of the audience commented, “What you don’t realize is we have a really tight economy in Sydney right now, and there are just no employees out there. We have the lowest unemployment in forty years.” I replied that I felt her pain—in Vancouver, we were at the lowest in fifty years! But honestly, I asked, what difference does it make? Even in tight job markets the great employees still exist, they’re just working somewhere else.

Poach them!  Show them why working for you is WAY better!

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

The old adage of, ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’ doesn’t work anymore.  A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills, and when you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need the people that will get the job done right away.

What should you do? I coach and mentor CEOs to go attract those who have proven skills and a personality.

Brad and Geoff Smart wrote an awesome book called Topgrading It’s one of the best systems for interviewing candidates and determining why you should bring someone into your organization. Topgrading recommends ‘leaning out’ two years into the future with every prospective candidate and determining what they have to achieve for you to be happy that you hired them at the end of those two years. Once you’ve started this ‘scorecard’ for the role, construct your job description around the milestones your candidate needs to have achieved after two years.

Once you have a tight job description, then you can interview against it to make sure that candidates have what it takes.

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.